London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Mario Draghi gets paid nearly three times less than our own Bank of England Governor Mark Carney for running the European Central Bank — a mere £301,000.

It’s time he put in for a rise, because there is little doubt who’s going to be the busier of the two in the next few months.

Super Mario will have to earn his corn. After pulling off the “whatever it takes” stunt in 2012 to stand behind bond markets, he now has to stave off a dangerous slide towards eurozone deflation.

That risk should be underlined tomorrow by flash estimates showing average inflation of just 0.3% across the countries in the single currency bloc: this time, falling oil prices will drive down the cost of living as well, so some experts think it could go even lower.

The ECB’s target — inflation below but close to 2% — hasn’t been hit since the beginning of last year, and has been below 1% since last September.

Draghi spent the first half of 2014 plucking out any number of temporary reasons — even German holiday prices — to explain the undershoot, not seeing the wood for the trees. Luckily, on the evidence of his Jackson Hole speech, he seems to have shaken off his torpor.

Suddenly, “all available instruments” are on the table — including money-printing — and, after years of austerity, governments are being asked to shoulder more of the burden of getting the eurozone through a “greater role” for fiscal policy.

But what got him so scared? In a nutshell, waning faith in financial markets that the ECB is actually going to hit its inflation target.

That’s dangerous because it makes it even more difficult for the region to escape the trap if people and businesses start delaying spending in anticipation of weaker prices.

Draghi went off-script to stress August’s sudden fall in the ECB’s preferred measure of long-term inflation. In plain English, the “5y-5y inflation swap rate” is essentially the market’s forecast of what eurozone inflation will be on average between 2019 and 2024.

But it sank below 2% for the first time since October 2011, at 1.9%. That alone makes imminent action likely.

The last time the ECB’s warning gauge sank below 2%, nearly three years ago, swift action followed: an interest rate cut and the launch of €1 trillion in cheap three-year loans to help prop up the eurozone’s banks.

The ECB’s version of the UK’s Funding for Lending scheme will be launched next month, and the central bank is also attempting to revive a moribund market by buying up bundles of business loans.

But Draghi will need more, as these are targeted at boosting credit rather than lifting inflation.

A full-blown quantitative easing programme will doubtless have to overcome resistance from Germany, but it is not against the ECB’s treaty arrangements, which only prevent it buying debt directly from member states.

In tackling an overvalued euro, the move would also be doubly effective as it is steering in the opposite direction to other central banks, who are thinking about when to tighten.

The Bank of England spent about 20% of GDP on QE; that could give Draghi, steering a €10 trillion economic zone, around €2 trillion of firepower. Even dipping a toe in the water with a €500 billion salvo would be a huge boost to confidence.

The eurozone counts for a huge chunk of our trade, so we have skin in this game. And the lessons of Japan’s two-decade struggle against deflation should show Draghi he needs to act sooner rather than later. We can’t afford a Japan Mk II on our doorstep.